Symphony of War instal12/30/2023 ![]() Fort Oglethorpe was left largely with the German cultural and intellectual elite. Officers and the wealthy were never forced to work. Those who remained caned chairs or worked on road construction. Six hundred of the enlisted men at Fort McPherson were then sent to satellite labor camps to work on farms. ![]() This group was also interned at Fort Oglethorpe.īy mid-1918 the seamen were removed to Fort McPherson, where another camp of more than 1,300 men was established. As anti-German sentiment grew, more German and Austrian aliens were arrested for “suspicious” activities among them were eminent poets, scholars, businessmen, scientists, and musicians. Those who did not accept this supposed option were placed in punishment facilities and given half-rations. The merchant seamen were given the task of maintaining and running the installation but were given the additional option to work outside the camp in road construction or quarrying operations. (At this time there were three other prisoner of war camps in the United States: Fort McPherson, Georgia Fort Douglas, Utah and Hot Springs, North Carolina.) Inmates constructed the camp, which would eventually hold as many as 4,000 people, and neutral Swiss reports indicated that the inmates were provided with adequate food and other necessities. This camp initially held German merchant seamen whose ships were captured in American harbors as the nation entered the conflict. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the War Department established a camp at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, at the site of the Battle of Chickamauga, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. ![]() ![]() They were housed in the post guardhouse, which later became the post chapel. Their stay was short because of the war’s brevity. Prisoners Socializing Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library.ĭuring the Spanish-American War (1898), Fort McPherson, on the southwest side of Atlanta, held sixteen Spanish prisoners of war who were captured in Cuba. ![]()
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